The Limitations of Human Thought and Thought's Proper Place in Life

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Thought Has Its Proper Time & Place

We’re All Insane! Second Edition will teach you how to think better and saner.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” —Albert Einstein

“I once tried to think for an entire day, but I found it less valuable than one moment of study.” —Xun Zi

“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.” —William Butler Yeats

“If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.” —Chung Tzu

Click for quotations on human thinking.

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Discover the limitations of human thought and stop trusting in thought over energy.

Thought cannot do.
Thought cannot bind.
Thought cannot know.
Thought cannot sense.
Thought cannot create.
Thought cannot understand.
Thought cannot be anything but thought.

Absence of Thought

All great performers report the absence of thought during their best performances.
For the artist, it does not matter whether those performances are in theater, music, sports, or any one of the arts.

Thought Is a Pointer

Thought cannot be what it points to.
Thought can point to experience.
Thought can point to sensation.
Thought can point to memory.
Thought can point to thought.
Thought can point to feeling.
Thought can point to reality.

Thought Cannot Understand

Confusion occurs when you try to understand two disparate thoughts with another thought.
Why? Because thought cannot understand.
Understanding is difficult when you try to understand with thought.
Why? Because thought cannot understand.

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What Is Thought Not?

Thought is not talent.
Thought is not reality.
Thought is not action.
Thought is not wisdom.
Thought is not experience.
Thought is not what it is about.

Illusion Is Thought As Reality

Why?
Thought can only be about reality.

What Happens Without Thought?

Creativity happens without thought.
Talent happens without thought.
Skill happens without thought.
Joy happens without thought.

Stuckness Always Involves Thought

Why?
Because thought pointing to thought as reality prevents the natural flow or passing of thought.
Thought becomes stuck on thought instead of eventually pointing to sensations.

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Intelligent Use of Thought

The intelligent use of thought is to drop and forget thought once you see or go where thought is pointing—because its job is then done.

Use Thought In These Ways

Thought is an alert.
Thought is a pointer.
Thought is a beacon.
Thought is a signpost.
Thought is a flashlight.
Thought is a ladder to something else.
Thought is a stepping stone to something else.

Thought Directs Attention

Thought is a magnificent tool to focus attention.
Thought is no more or less than that: a flashlight.

Thought Requires Outside Forces

Even mathematical systems cannot prove themselves.
Proof comes from outside a system (Kurt Gödel) because thought cannot create or understand anything.

Thinking Distorted

Thinking is regularly distorted in order to meet the goals of ego.
See Freud’s Ego Defense Mechanisms.

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Common Thinking Distortions

Cognitive Psychotherapies expose common distortions in human thinking.
See the 7 Thinking Errors of CT and the list of Irrational Beliefs of REBT.
For many quotations related to thought and thinking, see Quotations by Topic: Thought & Thinking.

3D: Daily Dose of Discernment: 2020

#Thought-knowing #Blocking: 2020-01-24

Thought-knowings, thought-doings, and thought-beings are all forms of thought-things.
Thought-things are thoughts that seek to play God and replace reality with thinking.

Whenever you have trouble finding something, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you, and stop relying on them.
Whenever you have trouble learning something, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you, and stop relying on them.
Whenever you have trouble remembering something, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you, and stop relying on them.
Whenever you have trouble producing words or finding the right word, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you, and stop relying on them.
Whenever you have trouble performing a skill that you have performed before, look for the thought-knowing(s) that are blocking you by stealing your time and energy, and stop relying on them.

#Sensations #Thinking: 2020-03-23

We try to convert experience into thinking; however, experience is only alive and real when it exists as sensations, not as thoughts.
We try to convert action, doing, and movement into thinking; however, action, doing, and movement are only alive and real when they exist as sensations, not as thoughts.
We try to convert emotions and feelings into thinking; however, emotions and feelings are only alive and real when they exist as sensations, not as thoughts.
We try to convert reality and truth into thinking; however, reality and truth are only alive and real when they exist as sensations, not as thoughts.
We try to convert sensing into thinking; however, sensing is only alive and real when it exists as energy perceiving sensations, not as thoughts.

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Quotations from Various Sources

Listed Alphabetically

“A book gives knowledge, but it is life that gives understanding.” —Jewish proverb

“Correct knowledge is dependent on objects, but the objects of knowledge are relative and changing. How can one know that the natural is not really of man, and what is of man is not really natural? We must, moreover, have true men before we can have true knowledge.” —Chung Tzu

“Do not apply reasoning to what is unthinkable. The mark of the unthinkable is that it is above all material causes.” —The Puranas

“He who knows what is of God and who knows what is of man has reached indeed the height of wisdom.” —Chung Tzu

“I once tried to thinking for an entire day, but I found it less valuable than one moment of study.” —Xun Zi